Twelve days after Hurricane Florence came ashore nine miles from my house, it's hard to think about much of anything else. What have I learned, I mean, besides how to operate a chainsaw without severing a couple of important arteries. That's easy.
People are uncommonly kind.
And people are uncommonly mean.
And sometimes those are the same people.
If politics makes strange bedfellows, let me assure you hurricanes make even stranger ones. Did you know you can't volunteer with Samaritan's Purse, which coordinates humanitarian relief all over the world, unless you agree to sign a form stating you don't believe in gay marriage?
Uncommonly kind. Uncommonly mean.
Did you know the Facebook friend you went to high school with, who pure-T wears you out with his tired rants about Obama being a Muslim (he's not, but so what if he was?) is this very minute sloshing around in a remote creek in his jon boat rescuing the forgotten folks from their low-lying, stinking mud-filled homes?
Uncommonly mean. Uncommonly kind.
Did you know the woman who swore at me on social media for not evacuating because the blood of the first responders would be on my hands (I wasn't under a mandatory evacuation it should be noted) is now wearing a highly unflattering hairnet and uncomfortable latex gloves to hand out plates of food to the hurricane's hungry, homeless and hopeless?
Uncommonly mean. Uncommonly kind.
Right wingers stand side by side with the left-leaning as we, together, assemble hundreds of ham and cheese sandwiches to be delivered to linemen who are wading in flood waters and fighting off snakes of the reptile and human kinds to make sure we have our air conditioning and Klondike bars again. That woman who is whipping up a batch of "special sauce" (really just ketchup and mayo) for sandwiches may ask you to "honk if you know Jesus wants you not to kill babies" outside the clinic but, today, the unborn aren't a topic of discussion. Today, she makes the sauce her kids will slather on donated bread _ heels and all _ and we will, together, marvel that Saran Wrap makes everybody look stupid and inefficient when it winds itself all over your wrists.
Politics hasn't completely taken a break. Donald Trump came by to pass out hot dogs and urged our neighbors up the road to "have a good time." Tone deaf much? Yes, but no more so than the friend who complained of long lines at Great Wolf Lodge where she and her family enjoyed a "hurrication" as many called it. In both cases, I decided to beat back my normal impulse to trash and dash. For now.
Most of us aren't uncommonly mean or uncommonly kind. No, most of us fall somewhere in the middle and try like hell to err on the side of kindness. Many times, maybe even most times, we fail.
After four days without power, I drove across town to a grocery store that was letting shoppers in a few at a time. A couple of doors down, there was the usual assortment of very elderly folks in front of the K&W Cafeteria but they weren't there for their usual chicken and pastry and coconut pie. They were being gingerly lifted from helicopters onto the ground and taken to waiting ambulances, if sick or hurt, or school buses, if headed to a shelter.
I can't stop seeing the looks on their faces. Many carried a little suitcase or a plastic bag of belongings. All they could grab when the helicopter plucked them off a roof somewhere on a rural road so remote it was most likely named for their family. A few clutched pets in their arms, the animals' eyes as wild as their owners.'
Florence will be with us in Eastern North Carolina for a long, long time. From what I have witnessed, when all is said and done, I have a feeling the uncommonly kind is going to win out. It has to.
